When I became pregnant as a teenager, I only told two friends. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents, and the thought of my community finding out made my stomach churn. Like Sita, I knew I would end up standing trial and banished. I’d be labeled a pariah in my family and community. I’d be held up as an example of what young women should aspire not to become.

March 10 is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, a day when reproductive health specialists and their staff around the country stand in defiance of abortion stigma, hate, and threats of violence to declare their pride for the work they do. Whether you’ve had an abortion, you’ve thought about an abortion, or you just love someone who had an abortion, it’s important to remember how valuable these health-care providers are in our communities. This Saturday, take some time out of your day to make sure your local abortion provider knows just how appreciated they are.

If you’re still on the fence about why you should celebrate this weekend, here are ten reasons to appreciate your local abortion provider.

Sam Romero said that it was while working on the 2014 campaign of Wendy Davis, an abortion-rights supporter running for Texas governor, that she decided to open up about having had an abortion at 23. But Romero, now 28, who identifies as queer, said that being out about both her sexual orientation and having had an abortion has brought her to an uncomfortable realization.

“When I talk about my abortion, people assume I’m straight. When I talk about being queer, people don’t imagine that I’ve had an abortion before,” she told NBC News. “It’s been hard to live with both identities in a way that I feel other people can understand.”

Storytelling is a long-held tradition in many communities to pass on collective wisdom, memories, tales and experiences among loved ones and future generations. Abortion storytelling has been around as long as abortion itself, about 4,000 years, and at one time served as a way for people to find out which roots or herbs can induce an abortion or find a provider, particularly under heavy restriction. Now, abortion storytelling is becoming more common in media, pop culture and communities as a way to eradicate stigma and build compassion for those who choose to terminate a pregnancy.

All of these Maine women recently had abortions in the privacy of their own homes, without having to step foot in an abortion clinic. Using pills that arrived by mail as part of a study by the research and technical assistance organization Gynuity, the women legally induced their own miscarriages before 10 weeks of pregnancy. And in doing so, they became soldiers on the front lines of the biggest abortion battle you’ve never heard of.

Things escalated when one of the clinic protesters approached me in the parking lot at work as I got out of my car. She said she’d heard me speak on the panel. I was floored. They’d stalked me on social media, written about me and now they had followed me to my workplace! As abortion clinic staff, we get used to the white noise of protesters outside; it’s a workplace hazard. It’s jarring, but being followed and approached like that felt completely different and so much more dangerous because this person knew so much about my personal life.

“At 19 years old, I had my first abortion with no regrets. At 25, I decided to forgo an abortion and gave birth to my daughter. I couldn’t afford an abortion, so I asked my parents to help me pay for one and instead they convinced me abortion wasn’t the best option — completely against my better judgment. I was so worried about the stigma associated with being a black unwed mother that I knew I would only have one child. So much so, that I had an abortion the week of my daughter’s first birthday. I refused to further perpetuate that stigma by being a black single mother of two. . . . Today, I’m a counselor at an abortion clinic. What I experienced in my life was preparing for this day. I share my story with other women/people who feel shame for making this choice more than once. I remind them that abortion is health care and they are sitting across from someone who understands."

Daniela Diaz never felt shame or guilt about getting an abortion; she knew it wasn’t the right time for her to be a parent. But Diaz also never saw women like her — she’s a Latina originally from Venezuela — talking about their abortions. “It’s something that we don’t talk about enough,” the Washington, D.C. resident said. “Especially Latina women who are plagued by stigma from their families, to know there are women just like them who are doing okay in life and this is a part of their life experience.” Diaz has been trained in the art of telling her abortion story, which is an important part of all activism; stories like hers matter because they break through stigma to reach those who aren’t aware of just how many different types of people have abortions.

“The thing that motivated me to tell my story—beyond just having had an abortion—is that I want to help amplify the voices of trans-masculine and other nonbinary folks who also need access to abortion and other kinds of family planning,” Jackson, a community organizer and writer based in Atlanta, tells NewNowNext. “I think it’s important for us to see ourselves represented in the reproductive justice movement, since oftentimes you only hear about women.”

“Everyone that has the ability to create and terminate pregnancies should feel welcome,” he adds, “whether we identify as women or not.”

The reality of the landscape today is that ease of access to abortion depends significantly on your economic status and where you live. Particularly for low-income women, and women living in states with few abortion clinics (which is common in the South), access to the medical procedure can be fraught with barriers. But there is another factor that is having an increasingly big impact on reproductive health and rights decisions: immigration status.